Eternal Flight

She thinks I need her help

Chapter Eight,

Carmen.

I've worked at this bar for almost two years now. My mother's friend, Fernando, though a sick freak, works here and helped me get a job. Luckily, I don't have anything to do with him.

Otherwise, I'd have no money, I wouldn't manage. I've always told my mother half of the amount I get paid, and I insisted that she would take that from me. Unlike with anything else, she had agreed.

My mother isn't a good person, not near that.

Here, in this underground, disgusting, bar, I bartend and wait tables. Nasty old males and comments and looks, but I got to manage. Working at nights, I'm too tired to deal with them.

I honestly don't know why I do this to myself. I could work at a grocery store, but the money here is too good. I'm getting that bag.

And working nights means working until late night, often until midnight, I have no idea why I don't have some limitations or laws being a minor, but okay.

Often, I work only at weekends when the school gets too much. Last night, I arrived home to a quiet house. Now, on Saturday morning, I wake to an empty kitchen.

I arrived home late last night, also getting to bed late, I still woke early.

My body just loves to torture me. It feels the tension and pain of this house, my nervous system not letting me sleep in this unsafe building.

I hear their snores in her bedroom.

I make myself breakfast, cutting fruit, some toast, and juice. I clean up a little for my mom and her guests, enough so I don't trip over their dirt.

Leaving the kitchen, I go to the living room. The couch is facing away from the doorway, and I clung to the hope of no one sleeping on it.

It wasn't worth it as I turn around and I see him lying there, chest going up and down as he sleeps.

Thomas, my mother's buddy, one of three people who almost live here in addition to me and my mother, with the way they spend so much time here.

They drink together and do their shit. Thomas is a disgusting human being; my mom lets him do things to me, encouraging it. Things that have ruined me utterly. She started to lend some money from him when I was thirteen.

I can be strong and stoic, I am careless, and I can give zero fuck. I can look at you blankly.

But in this house, with these people I am helpless, I break, and I am a prisoner. The only place that sees me in pain, weak and crying.

I can't fight back because I am paralyzed.

Quietly taking what I need from the shelf, I turn around, wishing I hadn't.

Thomas' eyes are lazily open, and he watches me, one arm resting over his forehead, the other on his stomach.

It's not fatherly or sexy, however you could take it, not affectionate or loving, we have a horrendous age gap. I physically feel disgusted and sick.

I want to run out of this room.

The churning feeling firing inside of me, I walk away. And to do that, I have to walk past him. Like clockwork Thomas sits up and grasps into my arm.

Thomas' in his mid-fifties, he's chubby and strong. I can smell the killing stench off him, hungover and uncleanliness.

I rip myself off him, "What are you doing?"